‘Spent a billion pounds!’ - Wrexham go ‘toe-to-toe’ with Premier League giants Chelsea as Phil Parkinson salutes friendly graft in front of Hollywood co-owner Rob McElhenney

The Premier League giants from Stamford Bridge have invested heavily in the transfer market since seeing a Todd Boehly-led consortium complete a takeover deal with Roman Abramovich. Results on the field have been mixed, with consistency proving hard to come by, but the Blues have plenty of potential and pedigree at their disposal.

Wrexham held a Chelsea team featuring the likes of Christopher Nkunku, Noni Madueke, Raheem Sterling and Wesley Fofana to a 2-2 draw in San Francisco, with Parkinson telling the club’s official YouTube channel afterwards: “We’ve taken on a team that has probably spent about a billion pounds over the last couple of transfer windows, and we’ve gone toe-to-toe with them. Improved as the game went on – first half, good out of possession, we felt we could do better on the ball ourselves, and the second half I thought we married both parts of the game together really well and got the two goals. Could it have been better? Of course, we could have won it. But that’s a helluva shift the lads have put in and very pleased.”

Luke Bolton and Jack Marriott were on target for the Welsh outfit, who have come a long way in a short period of time. Parkinson added on playing out friendly draws with top-flight outfits Chelsea and Bournemouth during a tour of North America: “Obviously the gulf in clubs – two years ago we were in the National League. We’re building slowly but surely as a club and Chelsea are an established club, usually compete in the Champions League most years, and Bournemouth being in the Premier League for a lot of years. It’s just great for the lads to come up against better players. It’s not just the defensive side of it, it’s on the ball when you have got to be that split second sharper and I felt we really upped our game.”

Wrexham have one more game to take in before heading back to the UK, with their next challenge coming in the home town of Hollywood co-owner Ryan Reynolds. Rob McElhenney was in attendance for the stalemate with Chelsea, and there is every chance that Reynolds will be around to take in a clash with MLS side the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday.